Interludes – Thomas Travers

Make Your Own Job

Some months ago a friend introduced me to the French expression ‘metro – boulot – dodo’. The phrase captures a set of interconnected feelings: that an inordinate amount of time is lost commuting each morning (metro), that days themselves are the fiefdom of work (boulot), and that once you have returned home, you are soContinue reading “Make Your Own Job”

Whose Myth are You: Mythocracy by Yves Citton

Several months ago, I listened to a podcast on Quinn Slobodian’s most recent book Hayek’s Bastards (2025), in which he referred to the scripts and narratives used to orientate oneself in the world as forming the ‘supply-side’ of political populism. Whilst the ‘demand-side’ considers the nebulous factors that lure voters towards populist figures, the ‘supply-side’,Continue reading “Whose Myth are You: Mythocracy by Yves Citton”

The Double Shift & Dope Thief

In The Double Shift (2024), Jason Read explores the stranglehold work has over life – the bodily, practical experiences of everyday existence – and consciousness – the mental forms of representation used to make sense of those experiences. For many of us, work is not only the sole (legitimate) means of sustaining our material needsContinue reading “The Double Shift & Dope Thief”

Lines of Flight?

By chance I recently finished two novels in which the commodity, that elementary form of the capitalist mode of production, acquires a voice and personality. They approach this personification of things, however, from diametrically opposed perspectives and interests. Commodities in Valerie Werder’s auto fictional novel Thieves (2023) are the object of the appetites of theContinue reading “Lines of Flight?”

Playground

For the past year I have been working (in an administrative capacity) for an ocean science master’s program based on the Cote d’Azur. Amongst many unexpected scenarios, the job has also provided me with a crash course in a set of concepts, practices, and terminology that at times has felt otherworldly: what exactly is aContinue reading “Playground”

Slow Down by Kohei Saito – A Review

Slow Down? Walter Benjamin once questioned whether ‘it is possible that revolutions are, for those of humanity who travel in that train, the act of pulling the emergency brake’. A revolution within the concept and image of revolution, this gesture of urgent arrest belongs to Benjamin’s broader critique of historical progress shared by liberals,Continue reading “Slow Down by Kohei Saito – A Review”

Reading and Incitement

Of the many shameful justifications for the violent suppression of student peace encampments, perhaps the most absurd was NYPD Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry’s presentation of a mocked-up version of Charles Townshend’s Terrorism: A Short Introduction. Discovered during a raid on the occupied Hamilton Hall, Townshend’s academic primer was cited as evidence of outside agitators, malignantContinue reading “Reading and Incitement”

Rough Notes on Outlaw Appropriation (Reloaded)

Note: I received some very constructive (but also chastening) feedback on the below. Ordinarily, I don’t think it is particularly good practice to post a version of an article that has been declined for structural and stylistic reasons. However, I can feel that my enthusiasm for the broader project of outlaw appropriation has begun toContinue reading “Rough Notes on Outlaw Appropriation (Reloaded)”

The Crisis of Narration

Review The crisis of literary studies as a critical practice and an academic profession animates season eight of the American Vandal podcast. A landmark survey of the institutional histories, proclivities and potential futures of literary criticism, the crisis is presented as one of method but also of labor. A crisis of method, as critics areContinue reading “The Crisis of Narration”